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The Irish civil war of 1922–1923 has generated two types of literature. On the one hand, as the defining moment in the formation of the independent Irish state, it has been studied essentially as a political conflict fought within the territory of this new state, by a nationalist elite divided over the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty signed on 6 December 1921. More recently the stress on elite politics has receded, and the civil war’s complexity has been borne out by less conventional studies. Local histories, taking the county as the unit of analysis, stress the importance of local,...

The Irish civil war of 1922–1923 has generated two types of literature. On the one hand, as the defining moment in the formation of the independent Irish state, it has been studied essentially as a political conflict fought within the territory of this new state, by a nationalist elite divided over the terms of the Anglo-Irish Treaty signed on 6 December 1921. More recently the stress on elite politics has receded, and the civil war’s complexity has been borne out by less conventional studies. Local histories, taking the county as the unit of analysis, stress the importance of local, factional, and personal divisions in shaping responses to the treaty. Others point out the connection between events south of the border and violence in the first few years of Northern Ireland’s existence. The place of the civil war within the course of the Irish War of Independence begun in 1919 is also important, while the social dimension to the civil war has only recently begun to be studied. There have also been some interesting comparative studies. In general, the more recent the study, the more likely is the work to depart from the elite politics approach.